Echoes of ‘The Good Wife’ in the Schwarzenegger Scandal

Well, many people figured another shoe would drop, and this time, it’s in the form of a confession that former Governor of California Arnold Schwarzenegger, who just last week separated from his wife Maria Shriver, fathered a child ten years ago with a member of his “household staff.”

But in Schwarzenegger’s public admission of sexual misconduct, one sentence stands out: “While I deserve your attention and criticism, my family does not.”

In politics, family is often collateral damage, but maybe never so painfully as when a sex scandal erupts and wives and children, never asking for this kind of scrutiny, are suddenly pushed, mockingly, center stage. The repercussions of that harrowing spotlight are at the core of the CBS drama, “The Good Wife,” which for two years has focused on a fictional family still reeling from the exposure of a pol’s tawdry affair. Inspired by Silda Spitzer, Hillary Clinton, Elizabeth Edwards, Jenny Sanford and countless other blindsided spouses, the series begins where the news conference stops.

In the case of “The Good Wife,” Alicia Florrick, rocked by her State’s Attorney husband’s infidelity, has gone through dozens of emotional stages (though, ironically, none of them disbelief). Some of the show’s most poignant moments have been with her two children, who love their father, want to protect their mother (in one plot line , they even hid photos they knew would hurt her) and are totally unprepared to deal with a world where reporters lurk around the corner and even their own young friends will sell them out for a shot at fame.

The good news—if there is any good news in all this—is that in two years, our fictional wronged wife has grown stronger, more confident, more capable of standing up for herself. The bad news is that the bad news keeps on coming: Only in the last few weeks has Alicia learned of her husband’s past affair with her friend Kalinda.

And now, in the Schwarzenegger matter, the news that he is separating from his wife has been followed by an admission of infidelity, and of fathering a child outside his marriage.